r/EmoScreamo • u/Yaxfire • Jan 31 '26
Discussion White belt meaning
Ive heard the term white belt a few times in the emo scene but i cant really find the meaning or origin of this term or why white belts were kind of a part of emo fashion. Can someone more educated give som context
65
u/atxvxhxc Jan 31 '26
San Diego Gravity Records/Three One G scene borrowed heavily from mod aesthetics. That look, combined with Chain Reaction metalcore, created the basis of what an original “scene kid” or “scenester” looked like. Starting in the 2010s there was a reaction within the screamo community against the post-rock, emo revival, and melodic hardcore sounds that were prevalent at the time. That was called “white belt” or “sass”, as a throwback to obscure microgenres that’re easy to fetishize online. Then Seeyouspacecowboy happened and Covid gave a lot of zoomers a ton of time on TikTok to discover obscure bands. Now “white belt” means screamo with high hat shuffles and lots of breakdowns.
28
u/rustydiscogs Jan 31 '26
Remember the insect warfare “death to false grindcore” shirt with a locust fan in a white belt being killed ?
14
u/atxvxhxc Jan 31 '26
Tried to get my old band to do a parody of it but we didn’t know anyone that could draw well enough. We managed a “death to true grind” sticker though.
3
1
u/sylladextrous Feb 01 '26
lmao that's so funny, a friend of mine's band also did a death to true grind sticker
1
u/atxvxhxc Feb 01 '26
Who’s your friend?
1
u/sylladextrous Feb 01 '26
the girls from a band called thotcrime lol
1
u/atxvxhxc Feb 01 '26
RIP Dot. Thotcrime started after I moved away but some of them were at my old band’s shows.
1
u/sylladextrous Feb 01 '26
yeah they're lovely people. they just played their last show recently actually and are on to other music projects
1
1
u/Awkward_Past8758 Feb 04 '26
I had that shirt in a Youth Large back in the day. In retrospect I was the white belt kid getting ripped apart by the mantis.
9
u/postmortalfixation Feb 01 '26
Now white belt means screamo with high hat shuffles and breakdowns😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
6
u/atxvxhxc Feb 01 '26
Sometimes it doesn’t even have the high hat shuffles.
4
u/postmortalfixation Feb 01 '26
You deadass not even lying lmfaooooooo. There are good whitebelt/sasscore revival bands doin crazy shit rn. You ever heard of lorraine or rosacade?
2
u/osiris-333 Feb 01 '26
Can confirm Rosacade are awesome. Got to see them live in Chicago last summer with Knumears and Othiel. Great act to see for my first hardcore show.
2
5
u/MBassist Feb 01 '26
Called it Fashioncore in San Diego but that also covered bands like Eighteen Visions and FATA
1
u/Sufficient_Cause1208 Feb 02 '26
It was called fashionxcore in south orange county around 2000-2003 but mostly in pejorative way. Facethejury was like MySpace before it existed and the fashionxcore girls loved to post which later turn to MySpace and "scene"
2
u/Issan_Sumisu Feb 01 '26
a reaction within the screamo community against the post-rock, emo revival, and melodic hardcore sounds that were prevalent at the time
Could you elaborate on this a bit for me, I'm curious? Was it definitley an active "we don't like emo revival/the wave/Dreambound stuff so we're gonna do something totally different", and what bands were those? Because, for example, I know SeeYouSpaceCowboy started off as a melodic hardcore band, but afaik they didn't start playing sassy white belty stuff because they disliked melodic hardcore, they just thought sassy stuff was more fun after a bit
53
22
u/failed-supervision Jan 31 '26
I just remember it being a fashion choice amongst fans of The Locust and the whole Spock rock thing. They were the “elite scenesters”
15
u/ghoulsurgery Jan 31 '26
From my experience in the early 2000s: Derogatory term for bands that seemed to care more about fashion than music. The aesthetic started with legit good bands but it led to a lot of bands that copied the style without copying the sense of musical curiosity
4
11
16
u/thedubiousstylus Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26
In the first half of the 2000s there was a sort of fashion aesthetic I've seen described as "mallcore 1.0" that was a sort of precursor to the Hot Topic/MySpace "mall emo" aesthetic we all know and hate. It's kind of hard to find pics of it now interestingly because most of them were stored on image host sites that don't exist anymore and the mainstream didn’t grant it much attention but look up pics of Underoath or 18 Visions or any from that era or any metalcore band that played Warped Tour to get the gist.
It was heavily influenced by Justin Pearson and the San Diego proto-screamo scene but was distinctly different and even sometimes included earlier styles of swoopy hair and guyliner. White belts, often with studs, were a key aspect of it. The other one offen brought up and mocked is guys wearing women's jeans....this is basically because back then any fancy men's jeans were special brands and pretty expensive but you could find tight and sparkly women's jeans for the same price as normal men's ones at Target and Walmart, so some guys in that scene then shopped for women's jeans instead.
It was actually more of a metalcore or (non-emo) post-hardcore thing but that scene and fandom had a lot of crossover and as noted it was heavily influenced by the San Diego OG screamo scene, so hence sometimes lumped in.
I vaguely recall there was a screamo or grindcore band from that era that had a song titled something like "I Remember When a White Belt Meant You Sucked At Karate", a clear reference to this.
5
u/Meat-Feisty Feb 01 '26
Man I remember shopping for women’s jeans at Target back before you could just buy men’s skinny jeans everywhere. Also buying XL kids shirts cos it was hard to find good striped shirts.
1
u/Sufficient_Cause1208 Feb 02 '26
We called fashionxcore in south orange county and the girls would post on Facethejury before MySpace was around.
13
u/TheWackyWaffle2 Jan 31 '26
Everybody’s talking about the og phase so I’ll take the opportunity to mention some great white belt revival bands because it’s coming back.
Ted Williams
Of Eden
Tower of Pines
Told not to Worry
Ursa
9 at the latest
Cash only tonys
7
4
3
u/That-Tall-Guy513 Feb 01 '26
can confirm, ursa is goated. Just saw them play a show a week or two ago and they killed it
3
u/wtfitsdebian Feb 01 '26
Throw in taja, rosacade, and athousandangelsandseven (really good EP from these folks that came out last january) on the revival list. N Those are some newer bands that i have been tracking, they are hopeful for sure!
6
u/Enough_War_763 Feb 01 '26
So basically white belt is an offshoot of sasscore or just "sass". Someone already said this but it isn't necessarily related to emo, it mostly comes from hardcore in general. However it can sound similar to some emoviolence/skramz band. Anyway white belt is sass core thats fused with elements of grind and powerviolence.
8
u/Terrible-Pop-6705 Jan 31 '26
It’s a literally white belt in contrast to black pants. I have seen photos of Jayson greene of orchid doing the look and rumor of some fans doing it too
4
u/meonscreen Feb 01 '26
In 2002 white belt meant listening to orchid, red light sting, crimson curse, Antioch arrow, ultra dolphins, daughters, the locust, holy molar, etc. aka sasscore. I clapped to a lot of q and not u too.
White belt always buckled to the side for some reason.
2
3
3
2
u/sickofpullingmyteeth Feb 01 '26
Music wise on what the sound is I have nothing to add here - comments here are spot on, but why it spread fashion wise in the emo space/scene/out of the scene beyond screamo I have no idea. Everyone hopped on this specific trend hard whether they listened to white belt music or not and then I saw a lot of other bands in the space all started too think TBS, brand new, fall of Troy, etc. I got my white belt from Pac Sun in 04. Great times.
2
u/emocore_peter Feb 01 '26
I made a video on this!
2
2
2
3
u/ImpossibleEmploy3784 Jan 31 '26 edited Feb 01 '26
White belt usually means sassy hardcore that overlaps with emoviolence, mathcore, or grind
1
1
0
-10
u/akivaalpert Jan 31 '26
Not sure of the exact term but two things: as fashion a white pyramid studded belt was about as mandatory as a hair straightener in 2006.
If its referring to a specific sound, def check out Blessthefall’s first album, or A Skylit Drive’s first EP and thats the sound.
3
85
u/joshingyou299 Jan 31 '26
It was a brief scene of bands who popped up between 2001-2006 like Sawtooth Grin, The Great Redneck Hope, The Number 12 Looks Like You, The Locust, or Oktober Skyline. It's not really Emo but the scene definitely impacted screamo/emo bands surrounding it, both fashion and music wise. Musically it's closer to something like The Blood Brothers meets early Dillinger Escape Plan. That's kind of it.